


Headboard

by jonathanesque



Category: The Nevernight Chronicles - Jay Kristoff
Genre: Alternate POV, Assassination, Bleak, Blind Obedience, Blood, Brutality, Corruption, Cruelty, Darkness, Death, Echoes, Fear, Foreshadowing, Horror, Introspection, Minor Character Death, Murder, One-Shot, Reflection, Sad, Shadows - Freeform, Violence, but ''not my finest hour'' is an understatement lol, her ugliest parts, i love mia and her growth as a character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24759235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonathanesque/pseuds/jonathanesque
Summary: “His purr almost sounded like a sigh."On the ugliest nevernight of Mia Corvere's soul, a cat-shaped passenger struggles to recognize the girl he'd followed for the past seven years.A POV retelling of that scene in Godsgrave, influenced by the events and revelations of Darkdawn.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Headboard

_Mister Kindly remembered the last time he was perched atop a headboard in a bloodstained bedchamber._

_It was to oversee the death throes of an overqualified bastard. The gruesome denoument of a legacy wrought of untold murders – a reckoning for all the hopes and all the dreams that'd been ripped apart and reassembled, coin by bloody coin, inside a hangman's coffers. Someone who never asked any of the questions they should've about what they did for a living. They did as they were bid. Never flinching. Never fearing._

_Now, as the shadowcat witnessed a handsome young man's final spasms of terror, he pondered if perhaps he was overseeing one of their executions._

_At once, he began his descent towards the dark beneath the don's spine. His jawline was coated in sickly lungfuls of crimson, only a dull moan rising from errant lips. Just as she'd promised, the Lament ravaged his bloodstream in a flash – all that remained was to assuage his passage through the hissing veil._

_As his shapeless form rippled and crested, the shadowcat spared a thought for the festivities above. The sweet nothings of marrowborn guests. The clicking heels of servants and guards. The faint swell of the traveling troupe. The senator who was no longer a father. All the souls and all the hearts unaware of what'd just been ripped apart from underneath._

_Not just a man's life. Not just his triumphs and failures and in-betweens._

_The not-cat fixed his not-eyes upon the raven-haired assassin sprawled on the floor. She was barenaked, breasts bathed in fresh scarlet. Slender curves and lips to die for. Kohled eyelashes dewed in the icy swelter of her forebrow._

_Unflinching._

_Unfearing._

_He bored into her pupils. Searching deep for residual traces of a girl he'd found on the filthy canals of Godsgrave. A daughter of aristocrats. A shattered soul. A broken heart. Someone who tasted every morsel and every crumb of life's bitter meal. The gentle sobbing of this poor girl once cut through with the applause of a holy brigand and a beautiful consul and a world gone wrong and rotten._

_And Mister Kindly began to wonder, then._

_Wonder why she could no longer hear it._

_Wonder when she'd forgotten._

_Wonder if he was to blame._

_At the opposite end of the mattress, a second passenger had coalesced at the young don's calves – a not-wolf that had once ridden at the feet of a now-deceased Lord of Blades. A loathsome dolt of a pup who reflected the uncritical obedience of her original master. From the outset, the not-cat objected to their shared cohabitation of the girl's silhouette, and even moreso that of her targets – after all, why should he have to share the fun?_

_But as the months progressed in Galante and her tally of endings as a Blade grew, he'd all but stopped sulking over whatever diminished sustenance he'd netted from the new arrangement. He altogether stopped finding any of it fun._

_All he thought of was whether Eclipse was to blame as well._

_Against his better judgment, he gazed towards the third party ensnared in the assassin's choke hold. A Liisian dona. A daughter of administratii. Approximately the same age. Someone completely blameless in all of this._

_A girl._

_The assassin's lips brushed against her ears, leaning in close enough to smell honeyed breath and supple skin. Slowly lifting her hand from her captive's mouth. Whispering softly. Vowing not to kill her._

_And the girl nodded slow._

_Cheeks streaked with tears._

_Exhaling the hop–_

_Mister Kindly tilted his weary not-eyes to the headboard._

_Pearwood, no doubt. Imported from the northern coast of Dweym. Tenderly sanded and sculpted into the iconography of Aa's holy trinity. An artisan's interpretation of his blinding sheen, soaking in all the hopes and all the dreams that would henceforth never be kissed by the dawn. All that he was and all that he could have ever been._

_The first and only son._

_Gaius Aurelius._

_Here he fell._

**Author's Note:**

> My first Nevernight fic! (And my first-ever published fic on AO3!)
> 
> Feel free to let me know what you thought. If you liked it, I've a few more ideas for this universe which I'd like to explore in the future.
> 
> The Nevernight Chronicles and all of its characters were created by Jay Kristoff.


End file.
